Community Values

Harvard University Statement of Values

Harvard University aspires to provide education and scholarship of the highest quality—to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to prepare individuals for life, work, and leadership. Achieving these aims depends on the efforts of thousands of faculty, students, and staff across the University. Some of us make our contribution by engaging directly in teaching, learning, and research, others of us, by supporting and enabling those core activities in essential ways. Whatever our individual roles, and wherever we work within Harvard, we owe it to one another to uphold certain basic values of the community.

Harvard Divinity School Statement of Community Values

Harvard Divinity School confirms and embraces the values of the University, seeking only to define them further in light of the unique nature of our local community, understanding the invaluable opportunity presented to us in our differences and shared concerns as we educate scholars, teachers, ministers, and other professionals in the study of religion for local or global leadership and service.

These values include:

At Harvard University: Respect for the rights, differences, and dignity of others.

At HDS: We seek to respect, understand, and learn from the cultures and beliefs of the members of our diverse community. Conscious of our own levels of privilege, we seek—with kindness and compassion—to engage in open and active dialogue that broadens our perspectives, increases our knowledge and awareness, and fosters mutual understanding and empowerment.

At Harvard University: Honesty and integrity in all dealings.

At HDS: We are committed, individually and as a community, to listening, speaking, and acting with candor, with equitability, and with courtesy, so that all may participate freely within a climate of openness, trust, and sensitivity.

At Harvard University: Conscientious pursuit of excellence in one’s work.

At HDS: We strive to pursue excellence with both graciousness and humility. We acknowledge that excellence is achieved through effort, creativity, and the exploration of new ideas and that individual achievement is rarely accomplished without the support of our community and the collaboration of our peers.

At Harvard University: Accountability for actions and conduct in the workplace.

At HDS: In seeking the long-term welfare of all, we endeavor to accept responsibility for the impact of our actions on our community, our environment, and the world. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our behavior and our use of resources.

At Harvard University

The more we embrace these values in our daily lives, the more we create and sustain an environment of trust, cooperation, lively inquiry, and mutual understanding—and advance a commitment to education and scholarship, which all of us share.

At Harvard Divinity School

As we advance our shared commitment to education and scholarship, we endeavor to build a community, and, ultimately, a world, in which people can peacefully live and work together across religious and cultural divides.

HDS Voices

William Graham

I envision a place where interfaith and cross-cultural understanding is always on a personal level and comes naturally rather than being an objective. By working on shared problems in the history and practice of religions, shoulder to shoulder with persons of different faiths, cultures, races, ethnicities, and viewpoints, one discovers most tangibly the common humanity shared with others very different from oneself.—William A. Graham, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Member of the Faculty of Divinity